Unquiet
Things

As we approach the end of our 31 Days of Horror, I’m taking a slight detour from our usual fare of films and novels to explore the visual arts – specifically, the mesmerizing and unsettling work of Marci Washington.

While her artwork appears in my book The Art of Darkness: A Treasure of the Morbid, Melancholic, and Macabre, my fascination with her ghostly visions predates the book’s conception, and if you are unfamiliar, I think you’ll soon understand why her work deserves a spotlight during this season of shadows.

Before we dive into Washington’s spectral world, a brief reminder about The Art of Darkness.  This book was, as I’ve often said, born in my blood – a culmination of my lifelong obsession with what lurks in the shadows. It’s a carefully curated exploration of artworks that haunt and horrify, mesmerize and delight, examining how artists throughout history have grappled with the darker aspects of the human condition.

The book spans centuries of artistic expression, investigating how artists have channeled their fears, obsessions, and inner darkness into powerful visual statements, asking vital questions about why we’re drawn to the macabre and what comfort we might find in facing our demons.

In her piece “Through the Thinnest of Veils,” which appears in The Art of Darkness, a shadowy figure in flowing white seems to be simultaneously emerging from and dissolving into the darkened wallpaper behind it. The scene is illuminated as if by nothing more than our eyes adjusting to midnight darkness or perhaps a slim sliver of moon through filmy curtains.

The wallpaper pattern is barely discernible, appearing almost rotted, as if infected by black mold, yet there’s an undeniable beauty in this decaying opulence.

Washington’s work creates windows into multiple dark narratives that exist in a liminal space between past and present. Her Gothic tableaux unfold in series after haunting series: pale, debauched ghosts posed like fashion magazine models against haunted manor backdrops; a grey stone lodge set against an eerily bloodless aurora; a clifftop crowned with a crumbling castle that could have emerged from Simon Marsden’s haunted lens; an enigmatic sphinx with eyes cast moonward in an agony of ennui; twins with long hair and piercing gazes that could have stepped from a Jean Rollin film.

These scenes of decadent society in crisis, these explorations of haunted houses seem to pulse with ancestral memory. Looking at these pieces, one gets the sense that darkness itself is seeking expression through her brush – not as something to fear, but as a medium through which forgotten stories and buried truths emerge. The paintings feel less like creations than revelations, as if Washington has found a way to tune into frequencies that whisper from the shadows, channeling voices that have long waited for their moment to speak.

Working in flat washes of gouache and watercolor, she creates grotesque faces and distorted bodily forms that seem to stare beyond the page into another dimension. Her palette captures that precise moment where fall surrenders to winter – somber dark greens, blacks, and creams punctuated by shocking splashes of blood red and enriched with brown and gold hues that hint at faded opulence. It’s eternally night in her world, whether we’re peering into candlelit drawing rooms or watching figures dissolve into moonless forests.

In her compositions, dismembered bloody hands and heads float suspended in negative space, while livid figures collapse within rooms where the wallpaper itself seems alive with malevolent intent. The patterns, inspired by Edwardian designs, have evolved into something predatory – all sharp angles and hungry shadows where ghosts might make their home. Her world is one of hidden stories, bloody handwritten letters, spirits that refuse to stay buried, forest threats that lurk just beyond the frame, poisoned drinks in crystal glasses, and haunted manors that hold centuries of secrets.

Washington uses the familiar tropes of Gothic horror – the haunted house, the ancestral curse, the vampire’s kiss – to create something that feels both classic and unnervingly contemporary. Her artwork suggests that history isn’t a linear progression but a cyclical haunting. The ghosts of past empires, particularly those of Edwardian England, continue to cast long shadows over our present moment.

Looking at her pieces evokes the great Gothic novels – Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, and the like. Like these masterpieces, her work uses the seductive conventions of Gothic horror to draw viewers into a deeper contemplation of decay, both moral and physical. Beneath the surface of her ghostly figures and decaying mansions lies a darker tale of spiritual crisis and cultural anxiety that feels remarkably relevant to our own uncertain times.

Her more recent work seems to suggest the possibility of awakening from this societal stupor, with figures reaching between realms as if seeking ancient knowledge and long-suppressed power. In one striking piece from “A Spell To Break The Spell,” a woman looms with arms outstretched overhead, her pose echoed by a spider suspended in its perfect web beside her. Behind her, a riot of nocturnal blooms erupts – spindly white lilies and other night flowers burst forth while shadowy branches descend and tangle overhead, their yellow leaves flickering like flames yet fluttering like moths.

What at first appears as a gesture of menace reveals itself as something more complex – a position of resolution, of determination. The images are both beautiful and terrible, suggesting that transformation requires facing our darkest truths.

This is why dark art matters. When we engage with work like Washington’s, we’re not just indulging in morbid fascination. We’re participating in a centuries-old tradition of using art to process our fears, confront our demons, and find beauty in the darkness.

As this season of horror continues, I invite you to lose yourself in both Washington’s work and The Art of Darkness. These paintings hold secrets in their shadows – yours, mine, ours – waiting in the darkness between wake and sleep, between past and present, between what was and what haunts us still.